Tag Archives: Australia

‘Writing across borders’ is a suitable sub-heading to this blog called “hinge-pin-press”.

I’m creating this blog after many years with one foot in my native Australia and the other in my adopted place, Arunachalam: an area within thirty or so kilometres radius of a famous sacred mountain in South India. The person who straddles these tiwo divergent cultures tends to be a communicator – either visual or verbal, hence the metaphor of the hinge-pin for this blog-venue is designed to draw all the threads together.

Of of all the threads and beads thereon, some will be published vainly, some self-published optimistically, some will link to other sites where long ago images or words were cast out into the vast unknown and some will be fresh from the horse’s mouth.

For the time being there will be ads interspersed herein although remember that only the best things in life are free.

Since images take center-stage for me, there is a strong motivation to add a couple of images right now, one for each side of my bi-cultural nature. . .

This images encapsulates best perhaps my love of India . . . A nation that strongly believes that worship is a basic human need.

Excuse me for being facetious in choosing this image here, but one of the best things about Australia is the fact that we all have access to enough to eat. This kind of store is an affront to human dignity I know but it is the kind of place where probably most Australians buy their food. Not me. I only buy powdered skim milk here. It’s a fascinatingly gross place!

There are many images that encapsulate what I most love about Australia. Food-wise, what I love is not found in Supermarkets like that above but in Farmers’ Markets like this:

Farmers’ Markets: all as fresh as fresh can be, all totally organic . . .

It’s not just the food at Farmers’s Markets, it’s also all the doggies . . . .

Forget about the vegetables, this is Big Day of the Week out for all our canine friends and babies also.

So. . . . more on that next market day. . . . now focus with me on something else special about Australia: CULTURAL EVENTS!

As you probably know, White Australia doesn’t have any authentic cultural events of its own because we haven’t been here long enough for culture – perhaps except for football where the green grass is so special. Here’s to football:
But this is what I call culture:

In the city last night a man pushing a shopping trolly walked up Flinders street beside me, he had one of these Lions in the trolly – a Black one, very fetching. I asked him where he was taking it and he said ‘Home’.
Australia is part of Asia – I knew this before I knew what it meant. China is the big male PowerShop in our world here, not America . Only materialists align themselves with the capitalists. The many of the rest of us take refuge in the Buddha.

Buddha Birthday in Fed Square – the active heart of Melbourne. What a Great day!

Here are some vehicles in the Parking Lot of the Buddha Birthday Baby-Blessing Ceremony – it was a full house:

And here’s auspiciousness for you – another cultural event: Chinese New Year. The Dragon is taking a rest:

It’s the immigrants from ancient Asian cultures that give Australia cultural vitality although it’s such a simple thing: it’s just about us putting effort into something together for fun, for its own sake, over and over again until it makes tremendous sense. . . Somehow the Anglo-Saxon-Germanic heritage of ours is missing spunk and spark, while the Asian communities can create it for us right here in the heart of town, no worries:

We are so fortunate to be Australians.

This continent is a very ancient land and as all the world knows, surely, the White interlopers who turned up on these shores as conquistadores in the early eighteenth century simply declared the land empty and proceeded to massacre the inhabitants who had sustained a profound spiritual link with the country for more than forty thousand years.

The fact that the conquistadors spoke the King’s English – as its called, set the tone for the predominance of white-skinned genes until the lovely brown skins and almond eyes began to spread engagingly through city crowds and school playgrounds during the last ten years. However long before this transformation got underway, the diversity of Europe infiltrated and established itself in ripples from the docks into the pulsating heart of the business sector with tremendous character and hard work. My very most favourite example of this is a lively Greek family business originally initiated by the now Patriach – a minister in the Orthodox Church nearby, who never fails to come to the shop even nowadays when his strong sons have long since taken over. Only trouble is that the next generation has set its sights on uplifted status. they aspire to a desk job over a computer.

Regular customers to this shop like myself, all appreciate the slower pace and tremendously good advice and suggestions given freely by one particular handy son . . . . waiting to be served is almost always an education. We are all grateful not to be forced to go to one of the huge MacHardware supermarkets sprouting like poisonous toad-stalls everywhere in urban shopping centres of this vast land . . . .unfortunately since Americanised Cheap-and-nasty encased in tough plastic sells, ugly uniforms and dog-tags fake it further and endless corridors of the same stuff seem to be attractive to the masses.

You can never find anyone capable of giving you any good advice whatsoever in one of those wimp-traps.

The disabled Scouts made this little wheel-chair especially for Charlie and he loves it . . . . This family is salt of the earth. There is also photographic mention of this remarkable family on another Blog which carries stories from both sides of the fence: India and Australia:

Now I am in the process of returning to India and will continue with more panache from beside Annamalai Holy Hillock in Tamil Nadu. There is brief account of the reforestation process on which I was engaged here for many years on this site: